


So Say Goodbye to Love

by unlockedlips



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fallen Castiel, M/M, Memory Loss, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unlockedlips/pseuds/unlockedlips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Castiel loses his grace, he begins to lose his memories of being an angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Say Goodbye to Love

When Cas’ Grace is taken from him, so are his memories.

It doesn’t happen all at once. In fact, the changes are so subtle it takes him weeks to realize anything is wrong.

While he adjusts to life living with the Winchesters, he simultaneously forgets the creation of heaven, the day he first blinked bleary eyes into the pristine expanse of paradise. As Dean teaches him the proper way to squeeze out a delicate amount of toothpaste onto the bristles of his brush, Castiel forgets the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the stench of burning buildings, of terror, of brimstone, of death. When Sam shows him how to log into one of the computers set up at the bunker, teaches him how to find anything he’s looking for in the Google search-bar, Castiel forgets the way the people of Babel worked together to build a towering city whose peak would tickle the belly of Heaven until his Father scattered them, confounded their uniform language, because anything would be within their reach if He didn’t. While Castiel picks up this week’s groceries from the local shop down the street and drops his spare change into the bucket next to the Salvation Army volunteer dutifully ringing his bell in a Santa hat, he forgets how the first drops of blood fell to the soil as Cain slew his brother, watched the life leave his warm eyes, let his body fall lifelessly to the ground as crimson stained his name.

When Dean kisses him for the first time by the kitchen sink after they finish doing the dishes together, Castiel forgets the way the sun shined down upon the little gray fish who washed upon the shore a millennia before, the way the light created dancing incandescent colors along its scales as he was overcome with the dawning realization that one day, this fish would give way to so much more.

All of this happens unbeknownst to Castiel, too preoccupied with sorting his laundry and wondering what to get Sam and Dean for Christmas to think about the centuries of memories he has stored in his mind.

In fact, he doesn’t notice it at all until they’re all seated in the den, Sam on the recliner he prefers, and Cas sitting on the loveseat, tucked into Dean’s side, to watch their favorite programs. The sitcom blinks onto the screen, the room fills with the sound of a laugh track and Dean huffs out a chuckle of his own. Cas lifts up his head, looks up at the bemused grin on his face and tilts his head. “What’s so funny?”

Dean shakes his head. “Just remembering that time your dick of a brother locked me and Sam up in TV land. You remember that, don’t you Sammy? Remember that commercial you did. I think it was for Herpexia or something like that. ‘My name’s Sam Winchester and I have genital herpes,’” he mocks Sam, deepening his voice until he’s thrown into a whole new fit of laughter.

Sam shoots him a glare, brows pinched and lips thinned in agitation. “Dude, I thought we promised never to bring that up again. I didn’t actually have herpes. I just had to play the role Gabriel assigned me.” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest.

Castiel listens to all of this with a rapt fascination, but he’s more confused now than he was before. “I don’t understand… Who’s Gabriel?”

Dean turns sharply to him, movement so quick, so harsh, that Castiel is jostled by it. “You know, Gabriel, the trickster, pretended to be Loki so he could skip out on his responsibilities up in heaven.”

Castiel stares dumbly up at him, shrugging his shoulder, and Dean’s eyes narrow. “You can’t just forget who he was Cas. C’mon, he was an archangel. He was your brother. Sacrificed himself to try and stop the apocalypse.”

The more Cas denies his brother’s existence, the more frantic Dean gets, until he’s nearly yelling, red in the face as he tries to get Cas to remember. Even Sam joins in, perking up from his seat, leaning over his legs to give Cas a peculiar look. He sorts through his memories, tries to grasp onto the inkling that the name Gabriel sounds oddly familiar, as if it should mean something, but there’s nothing there. It’s like someone had bleached his mind, scrubbed his memory clean to the point of suspicion.

The fear creeping up his throat tastes like bile on his tongue.

“I don’t… I don’t remember… Dean, why don’t I remember?” He sees the same fear he feels mirrored in Dean’s wide eyes.

They spend the rest of the night quizzing Cas on everything they know about him. They ask him about the brothers and sisters they know about. Including Gabriel, Cas has also forgotten that Uriel, Anna, Inias, and Hester ever existed. Sam asks him about the instance where Cas zapped them both back in time, and he finds he can’t recall anything except that the action had been severely taxing. By the time dawn is creeping over the horizon, bathing everything in an ethereal glow, soft and innocent in its golden breath, they become aware that Cas is forgetting his life as an angel, slowly but surely, and the repercussions of this are not lost to any of them.

Over the next few days, Castiel takes to spending his time alone in his own room, opting to sleep there instead of next to Dean like he had been before. He stays nestled in his blankets, ignores both Dean’s and Sam’s anxious knocks on his bedroom door, and tries desperately to remember all that he can. 

He goes through everything in chronological order. He starts at the beginning, or what he can remember of the beginning, until he reaches the end where Metatron stole his Grace and bottled it in a little crystal vial. And then, he does it all again. But each time he repeats the circuit, something else is missing. There’s another hole in his mind he doesn’t remember there being, and though he tries to clutch at each memory, lock them away safe and sound in a box in his head, they always manage to slip through his grasp.

On the third day, Dean gets fed up with him and picks his lock, banging into the room with a determined flourish. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Cas?”

Cas looks up at him, tiredly, dejectedly, from the edge of his downy comforter. “I’m trying to remember,” he answers simply. He rolls onto his side, turning his back to Dean.

“Yeah, well, we both know that’s not going to work, and you can’t spend all your time laying around in bed moping because you’re not going to remember what it was like to walk through the Pearly Gates. So c’mon, up and at ‘em. It’s time to get up and get some grub in you. Breakfast is sitting on the table waiting for you and I even made some of that coffee with that shit vanilla coffee creamer you like so much. And dude, no offense, but you reek. When was the last time you even took a shower? On second hand, breakfast can wait. We’ll get you cleaned up fir—“

Cas’ quiet voice cuts off his frantic rambling.

“I’m going to forget you,” he whispers. “I’m going to forget saving you from Hell. I’m going to forget all of the years we’ve spent together. I’m going to forget the time you taught me the importance of free will, of choosing your own destiny. I’m going to forget it all.” He closes his eyes and draws in a surprisingly calm breath even though it feels like his whole world is just shy of crumbling down around him. “Is it so bad that I’m trying to stop that from happening? I don’t want to lose you, Dean.” His voice breaks on Dean’s name, and that’s all it takes for Dean to stride across the room and sit down heavily next to Cas on his bed.

“Cas…” he breathes out, places a steady hand on his arm and squeezes gently, urging him to roll over, “C’mon, man, look at me.”

Cas does reluctantly, turning over in the bed to blink up at Dean.

“You’re not gonna lose me, okay? Yeah… Me and Sam, we already figured out that you’re probably gonna forget us both, but that doesn’t change a damn thing. Even when you don’t have your angelic memories anymore or whatever, you’re still gonna be Cas, you’re still gonna be that pain in the ass angel who pulled me out of Hell years ago.” Cas closes his eyes as Dean leans down and presses a kiss to his furrowed brow, keeps pressing kisses there until he feels the wrinkles along Cas’ forehead relax under his lips. “You won’t have to lose me, Cas, because I’m not going anywhere.” Dean clears his throat, gives Cas another kiss, this one on the bridge of his nose, and leans up. “All right, now about that shower…”

Later that night after Cas had bathed and eaten, Dean takes Cas to bed, lays him out along the valley of sheets and blankets and relearns the shape of his body with hands, lips, and tongue. Cas can do nothing against the onslaught except hold onto Dean tighter, pull him in closer and slot their hips together as his body fills with the inferno Dean’s touch always ignites. He kisses Dean with a ferocious hunger, all teeth and tongue and bruising pressure, but Dean slows him down, takes his time mapping out the ridges of his mouth, the curve of his lips, and it momentarily quells the desperation he feels welling up inside of him.

When Dean slips inside of him, Cas focuses on the slow burn of it. He focuses on the pain-laced-pleasure, the stretch of him filling him up. He runs his hands along Dean’s back, the swell of his ass, up around his ribcage, counting each bone he can feel under the layer of muscle, and feels the slights pudge of Dean’s stomach made from too many beers and too many burgers over the years. He can’t stop touching Dean, and it seems like Dean can’t stop touching him. Their hands are everywhere, cataloguing everything, not knowing if this will be the last time they get to do this or not. Cas stares openly up at Dean though the pleasure racing through his veins makes him want to shut his eyes. When Dean hits that spot inside of him, he can’t help but moan, can’t help but let his eyes flutter shut. No sooner had his lashes shadowed the planes of his cheekbones then Dean’s thumb traced the underside of his eye. “No, baby, don’t you dare close your eyes on me. Wanna see you. Want you to see me.” Cas nods his head, holds onto Dean tighter as he rocks into him faster, harder, his rhythm strong and sure as their union begins to come to an end.

All it takes is Dean’s hand wrapped around him and then he’s screaming his release into the night, grappling onto Dean for purchase as his nerves are set aflame. Dean watches him, whispers sweet nothings in his ear through it, tells him how much he loves him, and then he’s coming too. Cas forces himself to watch the way Dean’s mouth opens, the way his jaw hangs slack and his eyes squeeze shut. He watches as a bead of sweat gathers at his temple and runs down his face. He watches it all and is so overcome with emotion that he nearly chokes on a sob, right then and there.

He built this man. He repaired years’ worth of taint and damage. He pieced his bones back together, knitted the sinew of his body together with the power of his Grace. He healed the wounds clotted with blood and infection, wiped away the bruises as if they were smudges of dirt. He has held every atom of Dean’s body, carried it gently within him and purified him of Alistair’s touch. His Grace mingled with Dean’s soul, cherished him when Dean didn’t think he deserved it, and he prays that even when all other memories have been taken from him, he will somehow be able to remember the stunning flare of Dean’s soul behind green eyes.

The next two weeks are hard for everyone. Cas no longer chooses to stay in his room. Instead, he never leaves Dean’s or Sam’s side. He wants to spend as much time with them as possible before the inevitable. For the most part, they try to carry on with their lives as if nothing has changed, but they don’t bring up the past anymore for fear of realizing what else Cas has forgotten. And if some nights, Cas finds himself crying into Dean’s chest as they try to sleep… well, they never talk about it in the morning.

It gets to the point that Cas has lost all recollection of his life before he met Dean and Sam, and even those parts are patchy at best. Dean and Cas both agree that when it becomes blatantly obvious that they’re down to mere days now, they should start sleeping separately. It’s not that they don’t want to spend every second, waking or not, with each other. It’s just that Dean doesn’t think it would be helpful to either of them if one day Cas wakes up to a stranger in his bed.

One morning, Cas stumbles out of his bed, bathrobe wrapped tightly around him to ward off the winter chill. His home is quiet and it’s early enough that the sun has only just started to rise above the horizon. He makes himself a cup of coffee, filling it with sugar and cream until he can barely taste the offensively bitter liquid and sits down at the table with the morning’s paper in his hand.

Dean shuffles out of his room only minutes later, and Cas is so startled by his presence that he jumps, knocking over the coffee mug and spilling its scalding contents all down his leg. He hisses, pushing out from under his chair to wipe off the liquid as it burns his skin. 

Dean is there in seconds, holding his elbow, dabbing at the spilled coffee with a napkin from the table. “You okay, Cas?”

Cas jerks out of his touch, holding the paper out in front of him like a shield. “Who are you? What are you doing in my home?” he asks, panic rising in his chest. He takes a few shaking steps back until he bumps into the wall. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll call the police!” 

The man in front of him looks visibly shocked and then his face crumples, eyes brimming with an emotion Castiel cannot name and his arms fall uselessly down by his sides.

But Cas thinks, as he looks at the stranger, that there is a light behind his eyes that looks painfully familiar.

“Have I met you before?”


End file.
